The Danger of a Government That “Fears” Its People

 Fear and loathing

One of the primary justifications for a completely unfettered Second Amendment that I see on the Right is some version of the statement “We need to be armed so that we can make the government fear us, rather than us fear the government.” 

This is complete and total idiocy.

For a moment, let’s sidestep the fact that this is an explicit call to revolution in the United States, or at least a constant threat of potential revolution, and let’s examine what happens when a country “fears” its people.  (Spoiler alert: really bad things.)  Countries that fear their people are NOT bastions of democracy, they are lands of oppression, and places where the government’s fear of the people results in a reciprocal imposition of fear and an imperative to make the people fear their government.

Let’s break down why this is. 

First, a government that fears its people has to impose limits on the people so that they are not toppled.  These limits generally include:

• Strict limitations on what people can say in public, or sometimes even in private, because you might speak against the rulers.
• Establishment of a state religion (or lack thereof) to ensure that religious fervor is directed exactly where the state wants it to be, because priests and preachers have always been a thorn in the side of power
• Control of the media to make sure that no opposing views are delivered to the masses, and now, this includes restricting or completely cutting off access to the World Wide Web and social media, so that people have no frame of reference to see what is actually happening.
•  Bans on assembling in large groups for anything other than a state sponsored event, because lots of people in one place ramps up possibility that those people might try to stage a revolution
• Prohibitions against the people airing their grievances to the government itself, preventing citizens from contacting them to tell them how much they dislike what they are doing.

In case you haven’t realized it, these things happen to be the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, which illustrates which of the freedoms in the Bill of Rights are actually the most important.

This leads to the second part of the oppression, in order to eliminate the freedoms listed above, you need to have a pretty draconian police state to stamp these out, including:

• Constant surveillance of the population through the use of informants and secret police, so that they ensure that no one trusts anyone enough to talk freely.
•  Suppression of all “non-approved” faiths to ensure that no one gets any idea that a Deity might want a system different than what they have imposed.
• Establishment of a state-run media system that pumps out propaganda constantly telling the people how great they have it compared to everyone else in the world, and then blocking access to any source that might show this to be false
• Bans on congregating in groups larger than a small handful of people, so that any time people start coming together, the police and the military have latitude to just start arresting, or even massacring them.
• Blocking all channels of access into the inner workings of the government, which prevents many of the officials from knowing what is actually going on, because the rulers can never be absolutely sure that all of the people who work for them are totally onboard with what the regime is doing.

Now, let’s (briefly) look at a few places in the news where the government is actively afraid of the people.

First, we have Iran, where there has been a slow-moving revolution going on since September.  While the protesters have won a tiny, almost symbolic victory, with the elimination of the morality police, nothing has actually changed, as the laws they enforced are still on the books, and the regular police can still enforce them.  But these protests mostly haven’t frightened the government into reform, they have frightened it into incredible oppression.  The rulers are engaging in mass arrests, televised executions, and in a few cases, large scale massacres to frighten the population into surrender.  However, at this point, many people feel like they have nothing to actually lose, so this makes the government even more afraid, and increases both oppression and the possibility of astounding atrocities to bring the protesters to heel.  The more success they have, the more dangerous the situation becomes.  (It should be noted that I fully support the protesters, and hope they continue, I am just realistic about how far the government will likely go to remain in power.)

The second place to look at is China, where we have seen brutal suppression of the Uighurs, the people of Hong Kong, and even Chinese citizens living outside of the borders of the country. The Uighurs are being thrown into literal concentration camps and forced to renounce their Islamic Faith.  The Tibetans must accept Lamas chosen by the central government, rather than their own tradition, and when the Dalai Lama dies, they have said in no uncertain terms, they will dictate who will become the reincarnation of that leader.  The citizens of Hong Kong have been placed under a security regime that outlaws protests, or even large assemblies.  They have the power and authority to even dictate what Hollywood movies show, to ensure that these films conform to “Chinese Values.”  Worst of all, and beyond what most totalitarian governments impose, they even pursue Chinese Nationals who have left the country, through a system of secret police and police stations that can arrest and charge people in other countries, as seen by the arrest of five Chinese protesters by diplomatic security forces in Manchester.  To a large part, however, China masks its iron fist with a velvet glove, to try to conceal the actual brutality of the regime.

Finally, we will look at a country that fears only a portion of its populace, which is Israel.  Israel doesn’t fear everyone in the country, although they are starting to question the loyalty of the Liberal-minded Jews, they fear the “Palestinians,” a collection of indigenous Christian and Muslim residents of the country.  This example shows how a country that fears part of its citizenry can surgically remove rights from one group, while maintaining a veneer that those rights exist for everyone else.  The Palestinians have absolutely no right to free speech, free press, or free assembly, and their petitions for redress are completely ignored and even ridiculed.  While they ostensibly can practice their religion, their holy places, including the Dome of the Rock, are under constant threat of destruction, and their religious leaders are under constant surveillance.

But foreign countries are not the only places that have feared their people.  The United States at a few points in its history has as well, and these have not been bright points for Liberty.  First, we have the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which were a response to the undeclared war with France at the same time.  At this point in US history, the Constitution was still very new, the government was not particularly stable, and the great powers in Europe were still looking to squash the new nation.  Several prominent politicians and press people were arrested and prosecuted under these acts.

Next, we have the period of the Civil War, when Lincoln was afraid that Rebel sympathizers in the North might work to undermine the Union forces.  To prevent the dissolution of the United States, he unilaterally chose to go to war, to prevent the people from questioning this, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, detaining thousands for years without trial, to prevent this from gaining widespread knowledge, he shut down newspapers critical of him, and blocked others from being able to be distributed via the Post Office.  While these actions were understandable, and probably even necessary, when examined through the lens of the Civil War, they still were profoundly un-Constitutional, and they were still the acts of a man who was afraid of the general populace of the country.

After this, we have the Espionage and Sedition acts of 1917 and 1918, which were responses to the government’s decision to enter World War 1 on the side of Britain and France.  This decision was not particularly popular in America, which had a very large German population with large swaths of the country where the first language was actually German rather than English.  This suppression of speech and the media was in response to the real danger that civic unrest over the war would undermine the United States participation in it.

Next, we have the utterly abhorrent imprisonment of the Japanese in concentration camps during World War 2, alongside the Alien Registration Act of 1940, which regulated speech of so-called “extremist” organizations.  Again, these acts were in response to fear of the population overthrowing the government on behalf of the Axis, which wasn’t an unreasonable fear, given the Business Plot of 1933, which planned on overthrowing the US government and replacing it with a fascist dictatorship in the mold of Mussolini’s Italy.  It should be noted that the Alien Registration Act was the instrument used by McCarthy at the beginning of the Red Scare and was later enhanced by the MCCarran Internal Security Act of 1950.

To put this all together, through both international in domestic examples, we can see the response that governments have when they “fear” their citizens.  Fear of the populace inevitably leads to authoritarianism, if not outright dictatorship.  And given that a government will always be able to have superior weaponry, this renders the Second Amendment moot, at least for the point the absolutists tend to put forward.  A government that fears people will increase surveillance, limit freedoms, control the populace, and ultimately oppress the masses to remain in power.

So, what should we want, if we don’t want a government that fears, and consequently, oppresses us?

We want a government that respects us.  Respect is not the same as fear, and in fact, is functionally the opposite, as people rarely respect someone they are afraid of.  We should demand that the government treats us like adults: tell us the truth, no matter how unpleasant it is; allow every single citizen to vote in every election, and in fact encourage that, trusting that the people are smart enough to select leaders to guide the country; listen to us when we say that something is not right, rather than come up with insults to belittle us and minimize our ideals; and finally, try, as much as possible, to craft solutions that make everyone a little pleased, rather than perpetuate the concept that a compromise should make everyone a little angry.

And guess what, if we knew we had a government that respected the citizens, all this idiocy about why we need guns would evaporate overnight.

No One Understands the Game

Poker

So, Trump reversed the internment of children, and everyone thinks the good guys won. I'm sorry to break it to you, but we didn't win. It wasn't a fight we could win, because we didn't know the game being played.

I've said this before, and I will say it again, the American Media, and the American People for that matter, continue to believe Trump is playing Chess. He isn't. He's playing Poker, or maybe more specifically, he's playing Poker on a Chessboard.

I understand this, as I also play (the real game) Chess as Poker. I don't play the game as a series of strategic moves on the board, I play the person, and because of that, I very frequently win games, even ones against much more skilled players. (But I can't beat a computer, because this technique doesn't work against them, cold rational and unflappable bastards that they are.)

I find out what a person depends on in Chess, then I go after it. If their strategy is to use their Queen a lot, I make sure to get her off the table. I play specifically to keep my opponent off balance, wondering what the hell I'm doing and trying to figure out my strategy. I confuse.  I bluff and deceive. Sometimes I will lose a game to lull them into a sense of security.  I watch for signs of stress, and then exploit them.  I depend on luck even.  I look like I am insane or a really bad player.  But the end, they lose, because my strategy is specifically to get them so off balance they make mistakes and I exploit their mistakes.   

On the whole this is what Trump is doing.

He isn’t playing the game by the rules, and often he isn’t even playing the game they think he is.  And because the entire political establishment is operating under a set of expectations of what he is doing, and are viewing his actions under that set of expectations, the completely miss what is happening.

America has a long history of political Poker playing.  It’s how we won the Revolution for example; the British Empire couldn’t handle our unorthodox techniques or the asymmetric nature of the rebellion.  (Any yes, Poker was very popular in the US prior to the Revolution)  Andrew Jackson, the president who probably most closely resembles Trump, also played political poker.  Since Jackson, a lot of our general political strategies were based on bluffs, gambles, and intimidations.

But with the advent of the Cold War, we needed to play the Soviet game, which was chess.  The stakes were too high to continue playing Poker or any other game of chance; when a mistake could obliterate the Earth, a game dependent on an aggregation of small wins, and that accepted losses was no longer tolerable.   

The solidifying point was probably the Cuban Missile Crisis, where we were playing a Chess game for infinite stakes.  Had JFK depended on chance, he would have lost and so the game was set and rules were codified.  After that, American Presidents needed to be Chess Grandmasters, or at least surround themselves with people who were.  And the American media got used to politics as Chess, and in fact facilitated the system by reporting things a strategic maneuvers, gambits, and so on. 

The height of the Chess game came when Gorbachev and Bush Sr. played the game to complete stalemate, causing Gorbachev to knock over his own king in 1989 and walk away from the game by calling the first free election since 1917.  George Bush became the global Bobby Fischer.  Even though history seems to credit Regan with the end of the Soviet threat, it was actually Bush who finally got the game to end.

But even though the reason that American politicians learned Chess in the first place was gone, the game continued on with new opponents: the other party; the other end of the ideological spectrum; the United Nations; China and the Middle East, neither of which play Chess; and basically any group that the party in power opposed.

The fact we continued to play Chess put us in the same position as the British in 1776, we could no longer defeat enemies that weren’t playing our game, especially in the Middle East.  We “won” concessions in Iran where Chess (Shah) originated, but that was the only even remote victory in that region, and we only got it after being outplayed by Iranian masters over and over since the Iranian Revolution. 

We applied Chess to Korea and got a stalemate, as Go (which the Chinese played) and Chess are similar enough that we could get to a draw, even if neither side could win.  But we lost against every country that wasn’t playing the game by our rules, we lost Vietnam, and bogged down into ceaseless quagmires in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.  And because modern warfare is asymmetric, we likely will continue to lose as long as we think of it as Chess on the battlefield.

But Trump is different.  He isn’t playing Chess.  He has neither the temperament nor long term planning abilities to play the game.  He sees a big picture, however, not through the lens of a grand strategy but through the lens of a bunch of short hands that can change fortunes in an instant.  The goal is still to win it all, but the way to get there isn’t necessarily dependent on past victories.  The “wins” are only important in terms of filling his coffers for the next round.  A lost hand, or three, doesn’t matter, as long as his losses are relatively minimal and don’t reduce his basic bankroll, which in the case of politics is the support of the base.

As long as he keeps his 35% absolutely in the bank, he will have the ability to fund losing hands, and when he wins, he will increase his reserve.  He might give some of it back on some hands, but slowly, steadily, he is growing his bankroll of political capital.  Currently, his approval rating is at its highest mark since inauguration.  He hasn’t done this through a grand outmaneuvering of the Democrats, he’s done this by winning hand after hand, laying traps that the Dems walk into, bluffing his way, and folding when it is necessary.    

Which leads us to the current situation.  From a Chess standpoint, it was insane.  He exposed many pieces to being taken out by the other side, risked being put in Check, and not gaining any board advantage.  As a Chess Gambit, it actually showed weakness because there wasn’t anything to gain, and a lot to lose.

But if you look at it as a Poker hand, the whole play changes.

As a round of Poker, the Kid Internment mess was done for two reasons. First, it was to shore up his base, for whom any cruelty or viciousness towards brown people is better than sex. He has to throw them brown meat every so often so they don't get pissed at him, just like a good poker player has to lose some hands so the rest of the table doesn't walk off in anger.  Again, as long as he keeps his 35% bankroll of absolute loyalty, he can continue to play. 

The second reason was much, much more devious and evil, and talks to the larger poker game.  He was proving a point. He was showing America that he has no concern about the rule of law, proving he will act on a whim, and telling them locking people up in Concentration Camps is something he will be OK with.  This is a classic intimidation move, because it has raised questions among the opposition, myself included, as to what the threshold for future incarceration might be.  Today, it is an activity that is at best a civil offense, not a criminal one.  In the case of refugees applying for asylum, it isn’t even a civil offense, it is the actual legal process, so he has shown that even obeying the law and following exactly proper protocol can risk being locked up.

BUT, he had to end it fairly quickly, which is why he reversed it.  He won the hand and needed to take his winnings.  The reason?  There were court challenges coming, court challenges he might lose at this stage. He needed to make sure that didn't happen this time, as he needed to not have this a settled matter.

Because of his executive order, it is likely the lawsuits will be thrown out; the policy has changed and the courts don't like to adjudicate speculations. Their response to "he might do it again" would probably be "If he does it again, file another case and we will judge that one." He gets to walk away with the ability to do this left intact, even though right now he isn't doing it any more.

But all of America now knows that he could do it again. And that will make them either hesitate out of fear, or it will ramp up hatred against him. In the first case, he wins because he has further cowed the American Public into submission. In the second case he still wins because his supporters will be pissed that liberal crybabies are still whining about the kid thing, when he very clearly ended it, and should be considered the hero of the day. Further, it will fuel his narrative that the Left is attempting a slow motion coup, and will fit into his narrative on that. This then leads back to the mass incarceration in concentration camps which he hasn't gotten any ruling against.

Until people realize he isn't playing Chess, we will keep getting played, and he will keep winning. Remember, despite all of this horror, his approval ratings have hit their highest point since he entered office, and the midterms are not looking nearly as good for Democrats as they did a few months ago.

As of this moment, Donald Trump IS winning, and it is up to each and every one of us to do something about it.